A male Dr (his female co-worker wasn't much better) said when I was 42yrs, "you're too young for perimenopause."

Oh I was perimenopausal alright. They're lucky they lived another day.

Menopause is simply a footnote on a medical degree and that needs to change.

I'm almost 49 now, and have spent a fortune on an array of hyped up shizz to have a sense of normality back - it didn't happen.

To be perfectly honest, when women post-menopause say, "I went through it and didn't need all the extra help. Deal with it," and "oh, once you're through it, it's heaven!" I groan inwardly because it's archaic thinking and not helpful to our female descendants. My mother didn't tell her girls about menopause.

In fact, she said, "you'll find out when you get there," and, "we don't talk about that."

Anyone who has told me that your menopause will be like your mother's menopause is completely wrong. The age of her menopause and the ages of my sisters and I are not the same nor with the same symptoms. I'm a little past medical professionals pinning the tail on the donkey with that archaic, non-relevant belief system too.

Men (mostly male Doctors) still telling us how our bodies function are still administering a single blood test (not multiple as hormones fluctuate multiple times per day) to diagnose perimenopause and menopause. I have no medical training but even I struggle to connect the logic in that. If I took the test 3 days earlier or 15 days later, or in the morning compared to the evening, I would get different results. So why is this the way that it is diagnosed? It doesn't make any logical sense?

The problem with getting this information from our foremothers and the absolute need to be having these conversations with our daughters, granddaughters, friends and family is that we are all so busy. We all have full-time jobs to pay the bills, and some - full-time parenting. Women have been doing so much for so long that their own needs and the explanations about women's issues gets left off when full-time jobs, raising their children, and social activities all get put first. The culture of women supporting women through these transitions with grace and ease is gone and there isn't room for it in these busy lives.

For me, not only was I misunderstood inside my home and from my family, I then had to go to work outside the home with colleagues and employers who don't understand the debilitating symptoms of perimenopause and menopause.

And we can't take time off work when mentally, physically and emotionally we're fracturing under the weight of those symptoms, but have to suddenly pretend we acquired acting skills at NIDA to carry on for financial reasons to support ourselves and/or our families.

The second problem of our foremothers is what they don't say. You get two to ten years of hell first with perimenopause and menopause. Prisoners get less time and more taxpayer funded healthcare inside - of course it's going to feel "...like heaven" afterwards and so will our bank balances because the moment you're born female, you're paying an exceedingly high price with clothes, haircuts and supplies, shoes, and then menstruation starts and here we go on a 40 to 50yr journey of everything "pink tax." Sanitary products, contraception, iron supplements, even deodorant, perfume, shaving cream and razors are more expensive for women. And the rort of the labels "for menopause" on bottles of everything we rush to buy to alleviate the symptoms of simply being born female.

Like any of us had a choice, but all of us pay a very high price the moment we inhale our first breath, and that is definitely targeting a specific gender.

Yet after all that shizz, what has worked for me with my moods, anxiety, metabolism (I lost 8kg of a muffin top I never had for 46 years prior), memory, flushes, and exhaustion thus far is Iron, D3+K2, Potassium and Fish Oil.

Hope this helps some amazing, strong women going through this with me because we aren't alone. There are/will be billions of us around the globe.

XX